Stepping into the history books

12:50pm Friday 10th October 2008

LIKE many people, I had heard about the Second World War and the Holocaust during lessons at school, but as the years went by, my memory of the horrific events had started to fade.

Despite knowing about the millions of people from countries around the world who died, it was hard to believe that it happened just 70 years ago. The scale of the atrocities made it impossible to comprehend.

So when I was offered the opportunity to travel to Poland with the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) to see the massive Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, I jumped at the chance.

The trip forms a key part of the Lessons from Auschwitz project, which has been held annually since 1998 to educate young people about the Holocaust. More than 5,000 students and teachers have taken part in the project and Government funding worth £1.5 million was secured in 2005 to organise visits for two students from every school in the UK.

On a cold September morning, I dug out my passport and winter coat and made my way to Manchester Airport to check in at 5am. And after a two-and-a-half hour flight to Krakow and a one hour coach trip, I finally arrived in the town of Oswiecim with the students, teachers, tour guides, MPs and fellow members of the press.

Oswiecim, better known by its Germanic name of Auschwitz, is the town where the massive concentration camps were built. Located in southern Poland, Oswiecim was a busy, bustling town before the Second World War and had a large Jewish community of 7,000 people, making up 58 per cent of the town’s population. They had a huge impact on the character of the town, with the 20 synagogues attracting large congregations.

But as the Nazis made their way across Europe, Oswiecim became a prime target due to its large Jewish community and location. In September 1939, a large synagogue was burned down by the Nazis and Oswiecim, along with other parts of Poland, was annexed to the Third Reich the following month. The town council was dissolved shortly afterwards and a new German administration, with a German mayor, installed.

Life became extremely difficult for Jews living in the town, with around 300 people forced to work as labourers at the site of the future concentration camp. During the war, members of the Jewish community were taken to the camps around Europe or fled in search of safety. Many people were forced from their homes as the town became a base for the Nazis running the camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Other resources in Oswiecim were also utilised by the Nazis during the war, as the town was ravaged by the soldiers. They pillaged the Jewish cemetery, digging up the headstones to pave the roads. After the war, just a few hundred Jews returned to the town and recovered as many headstones as they could, placing them around the cemetery in memory of their loved ones.

The Jewish cemetery was the first visit on our whistle-stop tour of the area, and after the gate was unlocked, we all walked through the long grass to look at the graves. With the large Jewish community in the town before the war, many people spoke Yiddish and this featured heavily on some of the headstones.

Anna Webb, logistics co-ordinator for the HET, read a poem written by one of the few people to return to Oswiecim to find the remains of the cemetery. We also looked at the piles of headstones put together to form two large monuments in the cemetery in memory of the dead.

She said: “In a way we are acting as a memorial. We are keeping the story alive. It is important that we don’t let these people be forgotten. We are telling the story of the community that was destroyed, the families who did not survive the Holocaust.”

Anna also paid tribute to Shimshon Klueger, a Jewish man who returned to his home town after the war. He was the only Jew to settle in Oswiecim and was honoured with a special tomb in the cemetery when he died in 2000 at the age of 72.

As the group looked around the cemetery at the generations of families buried there, the tomb of Shimshon Klueger created a stark contrast as a memorial to the last Jew in Oswiecim. It was hard to understand how a thriving population of 7,000 Jewish people built up over centuries could be wiped out in just a few years.

Ste Brewis, aged 17, a student at Bury College, said: “It is quite depressing being here. When we were learning about it in history lessons, it was just figures and facts, but being here where people were buried before the Holocaust is really sad.

“At least these people were treated with dignity, unlike those who died at the camps.”

And as the students made their way out of the cemetery and headed back to the fleet of coaches, they began to think about their upcoming visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps.

Ste said: “I think it’s going to be quite disturbing being there. We will be standing in the exact places where the prisoners stood. It makes it even more real.”

Verity Longmore, aged 17, who also attends Bury College, said: “I am scared to think about going to the camps. It’s going to be quite traumatising.”

David Howorth, aged 17, a pupil at Bury Grammar School Boys, said: “I think it will be quite haunting and definitely put things into perspective. It will be surreal and I’m not really sure what to expect.”